Oceanhorn – Monster of Uncharted Seas Review

Oceanhorn is a game that suffers from simplicity and trying to follow in the games it idols footsteps.

The game starts off simple enough, your characters father leaves a note to you before leaving to attempt to take down the ultra monster “Oceanhorn”. You then wake up, quickly learn a few things and then start your journey into the world to take down the beast yourself.

From the start you’ll notice the simplicity of the game. You move rather slowly, your not jumping around, and controls are simply mapped to a few major buttons. Combat usually ends up being one on one and waving your sword around usually is enough to get past a battle. Remembering that this originally was an iOS game seems to make more sense with the simplicity of the basics like this.

Puzzles are a large focus as well and become a mixed bag. With many puzzles simply requiring moving of blocks or having a key often seem simple enough I found a few things that made the puzzles harder or more exhausting then they needed to be. I found some puzzles that required pushing one solid object through another solid object. One’s that required keys too eventually lead to just wondering around the island until you found it or having to travel to another island to get a key and then traveling back to finish it.

Traveling is another problem I had as once you get in your boat and pick a destination you simply must wait. You have no control over the boat and it almost acts like a long load time. Not even the visuals or sound are anything too great. The music is one of the highlights but you’ll find yourself losing interest in the game so quickly you’ll tone the music out.

Not even leading into a great story or full enriched world made my trip through Oceanhorn even duller then one would want. Feeling like too much of a straight iOS port made this console version too simple for it’s own good. By doing this we are given a rather bland and boring adventure that I just can’t recommend.